Bringing Specialty Home
Meet Vertical Coffee Roasters — Standart stockist in Unterlunkhofen, Switzerland
What’s the story behind your shop?
Back in 2007, while I was in Hawaii for the Ironman Triathlon, my partner Denise and I discovered that coffee can be something cool and fun. Back home in Switzerland, coffee was still very old school, black, red, and gold, and Italian. So we started a journey to change the state of coffee in our home country. In 2010, we started our own Roastery Gipfelstuermer Kaffee. We were one of the first specialty coffee roasteries in Switzerland. In the meantime, we’ve made a name for ourselves with our light and clean roasting style, best suited to those fruity, punchy filter coffees.
What’s special about your space?
Our roastery is situated in the beautiful countrside on the outskirts of Switzerland’s largest city, Zurich. In order to get our coffee out there and better connect with customers, we have transformed an old 1978 military Volkswagen T2 van into a Coffeetruck. We did a lot of festivals over the summer, and the blue and white painted van has somehow become our trademark.
Tell us a bit about your customers.
Our light roasted coffee attracts a lot of expats and younger customers who are used to this kind of coffee from experiences abroad. Many Swiss people are still very Italian-influenced when it comes to coffee and prefer the darker roasts.
What’s the best coffee you’ve had lately?
Some amazing Kenyan from Talor & Jørgen (a new Roastery in Oslo) that I got from Talor Browne at Barista Connect in London. I drank it back home and was blown away by its juiciness and sweetness.
How’s your day going?
We are currently going through a rebranding for the roastery. As stated above, we have many international customers and for them the name ‘Gipfelstürmer Kaffee’ is a bit of a tongue twister. From the start of 2017, we will be called Vertical Coffee Roasters. Together with the new name, we will get a new look, which is very exciting!
Want more? Subscribe to Standart here!
